Flatline ✷ Mark Sloan

FLATLINE

0.
FLATLINE

──────

SEATTLE

WHEN BETH SPOKE, PEOPLE LISTENED.

She wasn't sure whether it was her predisposition, whether it was how she was raised and sent into the world, but when she spoke, people tended to listen. She was definitive with her words, assertive, never faltered and never hesitated—— when she cleared her throat and called across the corridor, there was no divine intervention or crack in her tone. Her voice was direct and final.

(But so, it seemed, were gunshots too.)

"Excuse me, sir..." was how the end began, "I'm sorry, you can't be in this part of the hospital. We're on lockdown."

To preface, she wasn't exactly sorry.

She'd never been the type of person who could apologise but did so with a cracked smile that was ripped straight off of her Mother's face. She stood tall and professional, barely hunched by the foreboding of the next ten minutes of her life, and continued to smile as the man across from her just shuffled from one foot to the other.

She stared at him, at the man with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets and no outward sign that he'd heard her. There was her falter, brief and confused and propelling her to speak once again—

"Sir..."

 She hated how formal she sounded. It dragged out painful memories of a childhood dressed up and pushed forwards, brown-nosing and dipping out the way of sharp, socialite elbows at eye height. Another pause and another moment of silence.

"Can you hear me?"

"I didn't mean to."

(For a man so wicked, his confession was so soft.)

With an odd feeling settling into her bones, she tilted her head to the side and tried to read his body language like a book. A complex book, the sort that had pages that stuck together and corners wrapped and a spine folded over and over countless times— but the words that she read made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

"Pardon Mr...?"

The hospital was so quiet. 

She could hear the shuffle of his feet as he turned to fully face her, presenting nothing but a sad (ruthless) man with hard-cut eyes. They were light but frighteningly scathing as he seemed to see her for the first time— a moustache dipped with the movement of his lips and his hand twitched in his coat pocket.

"Clark," He said, and this time he spoke louder. The name rushed around the hallways around them and her breathing caught at the back of her throat, "Gary Clark."

She recognised that name / Where do I recognise that name?

There was something familiar there, but she could've sworn that they'd never met before. But, then again, there were so many patients in this hospital, so many people... it wouldn't be crazy to assume that she'd misplaced one face. She'd never particularly been good with names anyway.

But this man, those eyes... the way he stared at her, with eyes that cut her so methodically to the bone. She had a feeling that she'd definitely remember him. If not by his appearance but by his voice, from the way he held himself, the way he looked straight through her––